Girl Power

RADAR

THE PREMISE of the 10-episode Netflix series Glow—a 1980s comedy set behind the scenes of a women’s professional wrestling show that blends fake grappling and farcical sketches—sounds absurd, but it is based on an actual TV show that aired for four seasons, beginning in 1986.

The highly camp Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling featured caricature competitors with names like Princess Darkness, Matilda the Hun and Mount Fiji, a lei-wearing island girl. The show’s creators, David McLane and Matt Cimber, chose the 12 competitors, most of them aspiring models and “actresses,” for attributes other than their wrestling ability. The coach on the series would train them hard for six weeks and organize them into teams, like the Bad Girls and the Good Girls, run by Jackie Stallone, Sylvester’s mother and owner of the womenonly Los Angeles gym Barbarella’s. Who could resist such a premise?

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